They were leaving the apartment when it dawned on him. He remembered the book well. It had been one of the first he had ever read … well, the first without pictures in it. A bear was terrorising an isolated village. The backwoodsman hunted it. He tracked it to its lair, but found the lair empty. The man was fascinated by the cave, examined every inch of it. Then found the bear and killed it. Yes, Hepton remembered. He remembered, too, the way Harry had come to his flat in Louth and waited for him there.

The hunter gains strength and insight from the lair of his victim. Parfit was a hunter. And he had brought Hepton here because he wanted him to be a hunter too.

Satisfied, both men headed to Park Lane.

30

If Dreyfuss took the news of Jilly’s abduction better than they had expected, it could probably be put down to a mixture of painkilling drugs and jet lag. His right hand was heavily bandaged up to and past the wrist, and he lay on the hotel bed with his good arm falling across his face, shielding his eyes from the light.

He mumbled something.

‘What’s that, Mike?’ Parfit asked. Dreyfuss took his arm away from his eyes and angled his head up so as to look right into Parfit’s face.

‘I said,’ he spat, ‘we’ve got to kill them. It’s the only way. They’re killing us; we’ve got to kill them.’ Then he flung his arm across his eyes again and let his head fall back onto the bed.

Parfit stared at Hepton worriedly. Dreyfuss was exhausted, doped and shocked. It was a lethal cocktail. Hepton understood and gave a reassuring nod.

But in his heart, he agreed with Dreyfuss. The scent of Villiers was still in his nose.

Dreyfuss turned onto his side, letting his damaged hand fall onto the bedcovers, where it lay. He was drifting back to sleep again, looking much older than Hepton remembered him: older, sad and angry at the same time. Well, if half of what Parfit had related on the drive over here was true, Dreyfuss had been to hell and back. Hepton had the feeling that he too might have to visit hell before this was all over. A little part of him was looking forward to it.

‘Get some sleep, Mike,’ Parfit said. ‘We’ll see you later.’

Hepton was to share with Parfit.

‘My room’s got twin beds anyway,’ Parfit explained, ‘and it saves paying for another single. God knows, my expenses on this are big enough already. The accounting department is going to want my head on a block.’

‘How do you explain away a four-star hotel?’ Hepton asked.

Parfit shrugged. ‘Well, there don’t seem to be any safe houses any more, and the first place they’d think of looking after that is seedy anonymous hotels. This place isn’t exactly seedy.’

‘But anonymous?’